Yao Ming and Bill Walton are the two notable cases that ended in complete disaster. Kevin Durant is also dealing with the same injury and it's going… poorly. It's not an automatic career killer, though, as Ilgauskas suffered it early in his career as well. But it's scary. Really, really scary. As my dad (an MD) described it to me a while back, the navicular bone, which is the bone in question and leads to your pinkie toe, gets very little blood flow. So in the case of a fracture, it heals veeeeery slowly. It could take upwards of like 15 years to wait for it to completely heal, and possibly even longer with guys who are in the 7 foot range. And with a 300 pound guy repeatedly pounding on something that's brittle and the size of a twig, you can imagine the angst.
The number of games isn't going down (and if it is, it won't be much at all). There's too much money in it. Even the players aren't going to go for reducing the money. They could be stretched out a bit. Even stretching the season out a week or two and reducing the preseason gives them less back to backs than they had 2 years ago. Besides, Embiid came into the league with the foot injury and has yet to play even one NBA game. So he can't really be used as an example.